The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for forming a sheet material assemblage, such as a newspaper, having a jacket section enclosing a plurality of inner sections.
An apparatus for forming a sheet material assemblage having a jacket section enclosing a plurality of inner sections is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,643 issued Oct. 30, 1984 and entitled "Method and Apparatus for Transferring Newspapers From Pockets to an Overlapped Stream". The apparatus disclosed in this patent includes a plurality of stationary feed stations disposed in a circular array. Bottom opening pockets are sequentially moved through each of the feed stations.
A jacket feed mechanism is provided at a first one of the feed stations to feed a jacket into each of the pockets in turn as the pockets move through the first feed station. A plurality of inner section feed mechanisms are disposed at each of the other feed stations. Each of the inner section feed mechanisms is operable to feed inner sections one at a time into a jacket section in each of the pockets in turn. Since only one inner section is fed at a time into the jacket section at each of the feed stations, the maximum number of inner sections which can be fed into a jacket section is determined by the number of feed stations.